Why this?

The occasional poem of my own and a generous helping of work by others that I find inspiring. Site is named for a beloved book by one of my favorite writers, Italo Calvino, whose fanciful work lights--and delights--my soul.

Friday, June 12, 2015

At My Best

August is the cruelest month: never enough daylight, too muchheat, no holidays and nothing matters except September’sdawning responsibilities, but the August of 1994 I was HoldenCaulfield, summer camp senior counselor for the junior trailblazers, black and brown children two weeks shy of first, second,and third grade. Nothing is as positive, as motivating a force withinone’s life as a school bus full of kids singing along to the localradio station blazing hip-hop and R&B. (Imagine this cherubicchorus riding upstate to Ini Kamoze’s “Here Comes the Hotstepper.”[“Muuur-derah!”]) My workday is filled with hazards like chocolatemelted sticky swim trunk pockets, insistent sunburn, and the assortedrah rah of parental unsupervision, but those bus rides back fromupstate water parks and pools were my favorite times working.Have you ever ridden in a cheesebus with ashy children asleepagainst you, staring at sudden trees — more numerous than projectwindows — blurring along the highways like confusion giving wayto doubt, the heady smell of dried chlorine and musty towelslulling you into the soft timbre of a Midwest falsetto? Tell mewhat it is to fall in love with a lightskin girl covering the IsleyBrothers. I was not two weeks into 21 years old. I had yetto wear a box cutter in my fifth pocket, or see a semi-automaticaimed at my center mass, to feel its dumbness against my spine.My life was uncertain, save for its unlikely length under my control,like the pilot who falls short of what he says, what he sayshe’s all about, all about. All my homeboys were still alive, justlike Aaliyah Dana Haughton, not yet an angel of the cruelest August,begging a boy, who may not be in the mood to learn what he thinkshe knows, to look beyond his world and try to find a place for her.--John Rodriguez